


It's All Just Ghost Lights on the Marshes

by TheBitterKitten



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Episode: s01e09 Trou Normand, Hannibal Lecter Loves Will Graham, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Missing Scene, POV Will Graham, Sassy Will Graham, Seriously all of this is just a day in the life of Will Graham, Slow Burn, Someone Help Will Graham, Will Graham Has Encephalitis, could have been post-slash if Hannibal had played his cards right, it’s not even the full episode, pre slash, the irony, this is why Hannibal can't have nice things, will graham has an empathy disorder and it shows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:53:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26257453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBitterKitten/pseuds/TheBitterKitten
Summary: “Then let it become habit between us.”
Relationships: Hannibal Lecter/Will Graham
Comments: 4
Kudos: 57





	It's All Just Ghost Lights on the Marshes

**Author's Note:**

> One exhausting day with Will Graham, and he doesn’t even suspect what’s coming tomorrow. Set beginning/mid- Trou Normand.

Will shudders awake into the half-light of early morning. The sheets are slimy and cold where they’re tangled around him, grasping like so many dead fingers. He grabs his towel and shifts to a less-drenched spot. He scrubs his face hard, trying to scrape the images and _that song_ from his mind, steeling himself to look at the clock.

6:15. Normal. And he’s in his own bed, dogs peppered around the room like so many stars. Their affable attention falls on him as he rouses; looking for breakfast and a run. They don’t seem worried.

He must be fine.

He lets the dogs out, watching them tumble over each other and spill into the yard as one roiling excitation of fur, a sea of wagging tails and lolling tongues and pure happiness. Will watches them, lets their easy energy swirl around him for a long time before he turns away to shower.

Will can’t help thinking about Hannibal as he prepares the dogs’ breakfast and then coffee for himself. Hannibal’s concern for him was genuine yesterday. His sincerity had blazed through Will’s disorientation and —-well, well yeah, it was panic. Caught him in his spiraling and grounded him. _I’m your friend, Will. I don’t care about the lives you save. I care about your life_.

Even now, having mulled them over for hours last night, the words sit strangely within him: foreign, definitely, but not exactly uncomfortable. A stretch, limbering the muscle. And, maybe... maybe even welcome, if Will gets reckless. And the rest of the evening was unexpectedly... cozy. Hannibal had insisted he stay over for the evening, had cooked dinner for them. He moved like dark magic in the kitchen; so confident and precise, shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows and pristine apron wrapped tight around his hips. Hands so big and yet delicate as he wielded his knife. They’d avoided the topic of Will’s arrival studiously, skimming over philosophy and mythology, art and music. It had been effortless, finding more similarities than difference until Will felt solid enough to make the drive home. More like until he needed to feed his dogs, but it was the same thing, really.

Hannibal’s affectionate smile as he showed Will out lingers warm and bright in Will’s mind, and Will feels an answering pull of his own mouth even now. Hannibal’s face is usually carved from stone, more often flickers and shadows reflecting his mood than full expressions. To see something so plainly shown on that marble face, and just for Will, feels pleasantly meaningful. The suggestion that his symptoms are mental illness and not physical is shut away.

At length, Will brings the dogs in and feeds them all in turn, delaying as long as possible the moment he has to meet with Jack. He wishes he could remember any little snippet of himself from that missing time between staring up at all the rotted years of a life’s work and Hannibal’s waiting room.

Will only hopes he wasn’t too abrupt, too cruel in what he said or did. He keeps such tight control over his body and his emotions around other people that the thought of having lost it honestly terrifies him.

And he has to control himself, moderate his reactions; either the more precise method of parsing each individual feeling passing through him to use what he wants, or more desperately, throwing up a wall between Will and Not Will. Separating himself from the latent influence of others’ emotions brushing carelessly, constantly against him. It’s draining, but otherwise he finds himself slipping into someone else’s gestures, picking up their accent and following their train of thought, wanting their wants. Even so, he can’t help mirroring a speech pattern or two here and there, or finds himself standing the same way. 

Beyond the danger to himself and others of the drive, the idea that he was around an entire FBI crime scene unit, and Jack, with no filter, no moderation, just letting it all right in and out makes his stomach drop, acid rise in his throat.

And it isn’t even clear to Will what he might have been like. Himself, or... or the architect of the decaying totem pole on the beach? A mix? Every murder he has ever looked at, has submersed himself in, becomes a lived, experienced memory from his own life, the motivation his own; not the sterile photographs they are reduced to for others. All of those are piled up in the corners of his mind, another influence to moderate. And while he was still so freshly feeling the joints of the body at the top of the totem breaking under his hands, and the hurricane of pride at his life’s work being completed, what the _hell had he done?_

Maybe it could be a good thing, though. Such a public breakdown, as humiliating as that is, might force Jack’s hand and let Will take a break. Just until he’s more stable, has sorted himself out, shored up the levees in his mind. His desk in his classroom appears before him, stacked neatly with student work he has actually paid attention to while gradingit. He satisfies himself with the knowledge that if he acted too violently, he would already know, from Jack or Beverly for sure.

Will enters Jack’s office hesitantly, pausing before he’s admitted with a gruff “Hey”.He takes a slow breath, assessing the mood of the man inside. Vague irritation prickles within him. There’s fatigue, heavy on his limbs.The fearsome wish to be home with his wife, buried in the sweet softness of her curls. A ticking clock of urgency, the driving need to shut the cases on his desk. A vision wells and dissipates like smoke in front of him: Jack hauling the unseen killers into his superior’s office, a king presenting his conquests. Proving his department’s worth, that he deserves a higher budget. There’s worry, too, but he can’t place it; it’s too far in the background of the fabric of Jack’s mood to parse. Must be where Will sits among things. At least it’s something.

Will lets the breath out. He grounds himself, thumb grazing his forefinger, wishing he was close enough to touch something. He decides to just address what happened, adopting some of Jack’s pragmatism.

“I’m sorry about yesterday,” he begins, braced for the concern from other man to crash over him.

“Sorry about what?” Will only merits a glance up from paperwork before Jack returns his attention to what’s on his desk, barely curious.

Will’s brow furrows, caught off-guard, but he clears it quickly. “I… wasn’t feeling like myself,” he offers, still waiting, expecting the worry to become more apparent.

“Not feeling like yourself is the nature of what you do,” It’s a tired joke, and Will feels the familiarity and friendliness between them, but nothing else. Will goes cold, ice balling in his stomach.

“So... so I seemed fine to you?” Will can’t help the edge to the question, dumbfounded that Jack didn’t notice _anything_. He’s desperate, if he admits it, for Jack to see him. All he’s getting, though, is Jack’s detached assessment of a potential setback in closing cases.

“Something you want to tell me?” Jack asks, and it’s just cold, all but demanding a negative answer.

“No,” Will says, answering how Jack wants him to before he can stop himself.

“Then there seems to be something you don’t want to tell me,” Jack says, and it’s accusatory, and condemning, and Will only wants so much for Jack to see what’s _happening to him._

“I guess... I guess I just got a little lost yesterday, is all,” Will says, pressing forward in spite of everything, willing Jack to pick up on his fear.

“And where are you now?”It’s openly critical, assuming the worst, assuming _weakness_. Jack’s friendliness is remote, if it’s there at all. But Will can’t stop now.

“It got to me. All… All those bodies _got to me._ I thought it was more obvious than it was,” he admits, almost sagging under the weight of it. A scream ricochets off his bones and around his skull and never quite reaches his mouth, begging Jack to just _see_ him. Just for a moment. Just this once.

“If there’s a problem, you need to tell me. And let me help you. Is there a problem, Will?” The words fall like so many dead stones out of Jack’s mouth, and Will sees them bounce onto the desk. Jack watches him, face cold and closed. Deeply uninterested in the truth Jack and Will both know is fluttering in his gut right there in front of him.

Will swallows again, feeling the irritation and disappointment seeping from Jack, now directed fully at him, feels the potent desire for Will to just get to work already because his mind is needed.

“Everything’s fine,” Will says, the smile twisting his face bitter and manic and false before he leaves. As he heads to the door, he feels Jack’s apprehension begin to crest like a wave before it’s subsumed with the justification that Jack asked and was denied.

Will knows Jack is a steamroller; knows Jack’s particular pathology is the single-minded pursuit of a very specific justice, regardless of the law or the human bodies in his path, and part of signing on with him was signing away frailty and anything but results. Even so, Will can’t help but hold it against him, just now.

Will just buries himself in the lecture, fighting the ball of terror and anger and disappointment growing in his stomach. He puts on a veritable show for the students, explaining in minute detail every aspect of every murder connected to the totem pole, even if they’re officially labeled as accidental.

When Alana arrives with her careful phrase of “rehearsing”, it’s all Will can manage to slump against his desk as his reality flickers before him. It can’t have all been a hallucination. It was too real to be. The smell of coffee in paper cups, the murmur of bodies shifting in seats, ticking keyboards, the stifled cough from somewhere near the back? All the questions, the hands raised and acknowledged, the brief interactions with students as they found their seats...?

But she’s talking, and about them, the possibility of them. The... impossibility of them. And he can only nod and thank her for not lying when she rejects him so completely on account of his instability. They both know it’s catnip to her savior kink; her borderline pathological need to be the hand held out, the sword held aloft. To be the warm smile in dark places, the song carving a path out of Hades. It’s not his fault that he’s doomed to be Eurydice.

“Do you feel unstable, Will?” she’s asking, and Will nods again, a drowning man clutching at the life ring thrown to him. Reality is trembling and shimmering around him if he doesn’t focus on Alana. It’s all just ghost lights on the marshes. And she wraps him in a hug so warm and softly strong, so grounding and poppy-scented he can only just stop himself from openly sobbing. He breathes into it, letting her strength buoy him. It’s the cool shade under an oak tree in a meadow, the sound of waves lapping at the shore.

And then Will tries very hard to throw up the wall between Will and Not Will, but it’s far too late. Because simmering somewhere below Alana’s real and welcome worry, her friendship, closer to her attraction and desire for him, almost mingling with it— that _professional curiosity_ , burning coal that sears his lungs as he breathes it in.

The image forms of her settled in Hannibal’s armchair: eyes narrowed, that set to her mouth. Curls fall over her shoulder when her head tilts, taking meticulous notes and probing him with questions. She strips him naked and he’s all too willing to let her; takes him utterly apart to put back together in a paper. The vision shifts to her presenting on him, his face ten feet tall on the powerpoint slide behind her.

And Will knows, he knows she’s trying to ignore it, but it’s _there_ even _now_ and his heart falters. He’s the one to break the contact, trying to smile again and feeling it look ghastly on his face. Alana recenters herself, a pace away now. He gathers his things and finds some excuse to leave.

The visit with Abigail is one long study in torture. Freddie Lounds hangs thick in the air between them all, choking it. The threat of her book about them, him, the man he killed—in a way, it’s so much worse than an academic paper. At least Alana would be only truthful, and at a _professional_ remove. Freddie is intuitive, and right more often than not, but never lets truth or other people get in the way of profit and spectacle. Abigail herself is brutally plain that all she is willing to see right now in Will is the man who killed her father— a man that Will doesn’t yet want to know— so bluntly and cruelly even Hannibal objects. All Will wants is to surround himself with his dogs.

Hannibal suggests that Will stay for dinner on the ride home, breaking the fraught silence of the past fifteen minutes where Hannibal has focused on the road and Will has alternatelybrooded out of his window at the passing scenery and dry swallowed a few tablets of ibuprofen. The prospect of dinner with Hannibal feels surprisingly like relief; feels like falling bonelessly into a warm, soft bed. Feels like the quiet of deep forest. So Will accepts.

And it is. Will sips a sweet, dark wine as he watches Hannibal bend to check the roasting vegetables and baking dessert in the ovens. His apron is somehow still a pristine, unwrinkled white at his hips. He moves to the stove, pours whisky into the pan of sautéing loin and tips the pan expertly into the burner. It catches with a hot, bright blue flame, and Will feels Hannibal’s satisfaction. It doesn’t seem to matter so much right now that Jack will let Will burn, will let him _break_ , and he’ll just have to make do. He can savor this evening, this anticipation of a fine meal with... his friend. But Will can’t help pushing, toeing for the line where Hannibal pushes him away.

“You know, if this keeps happening, it’ll become a habit for us to have dinner together,” Will says, watching Hannibal’s face for his reaction.

“Habits are paths where our minds have once found comfort and pleasure, which they return to in hopes of finding more of the same. Have you found comfort and pleasure in our dinners, Will?” he replies, not looking up from the dimming flame in the pan, face mostly unchanged, and yet, maybe softer? Might be the light.

“Comfortable, pleasant paths don’t always lead to good places. I mean, there’s the road to hell and all,” Will says, still prodding for the line, “But yes. I’m enjoying this.”

“Then, let it become a habit between us. You’ll find comfort from the horrors you witness, and I’ll find pleasure in feeding you proper meals,” Hannibal says off-handedly.Will can feel, though, that the man finds some comfort in the idea, too— fewer lonely meals for one. That warm feeling is back in his chest, and whether it’s him or it’s Hannibal doesn’t matter.

So it’s fine. He must be fine. 


End file.
